CVE-2022-48754

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

phylib: fix potential use-after-free

Commit bafbdd527d56 (phylib: Add device reset GPIO support) added call to phy_device_reset(phydev) after the put_device() call in phy_detach().

The comment before the put_device() call says that the phydev might go away with put_device().

Fix potential use-after-free by calling phy_device_reset() before put_device().

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/67d271760b037ce0806d687ee6057edc8afd4205
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/aefaccd19379d6c4620269a162bfb88ff687f289
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bd024e36f68174b1793906c39ca16cee0c9295c2
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cb2fab10fc5e7a3aa1bb0a68a3abdcf3e37852af
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cbda1b16687580d5beee38273f6241ae3725960c
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f39027cbada43b33566c312e6be3db654ca3ad17